Radical Self-Care and Work-Life Balance
The Birkbeck Women's Campaign's International Women's Month festivities were kicked off with the Radical Self-Care and Work-Life Balance Workshop on Friday, the 9th of March. This event fell perfectly between International (Working) Women's Day and Mother's Day. Women make up 54% of the Birkbeck, many of whom are women of colour. Most of us have outside responsibilities in addition to our studies, all of which are demanding of our time. How often do you put yourself second, third or even last? We wanted to do a self-care workshop with a difference.
Sara Hurley, Wellbeing Officer on the Women's Committee, opened this event with the #FeelingMySelfCare portion of the evening, which she had tailored for Birkbeck students. We were guided through the deconstruction of barriers to self-care, as we brainstormed practical solutions and put them to paper. Self-care is about nurturing and nourishing the mind, body and soul. It's also about recognising what is and isn't best for oneself. Self-care is, after all, arguably the practical application and extension of self-love.
Self-care can also entail a great deal of unlearning and de-conditioning. It was Audre Lorde who invented self-care, famously saying: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” This inspired my desire for a personal safety aspect to the workshop - for us to reclaim power in a world that so often tries to take it away. Following a series of group and pair activities, there was a self-defence class with Sev Necati. Sev covered situational awareness and street safety at length. One of the primary take-away points was fundamentally not being afraid to use your voice and force to protect yourself.
In the aim of achieving balance and a different kind of awareness of one's surroundings, the self-defence class was followed by yoga and an introduction to the philosophy of yoga with Salema Veliu - a Birkbeck alumna! Salema led members through bodily awareness, breathing, grounding techniques and insight into the chakra system. Following both a relaxing and challenging yoga class, we closed the evening with the final exercise where we paired up to challenge and advise one another on our internal barriers to self-care.
Taking a communal approach to self-care echoed back to the role of sisterhood in women's well-being and progress, as it can so easily appear to be an individualistic act. In actuality, women caring for themselves is to our collective as well as our individual betterment. Ultimately, the aim of the evening was holistic, nurturing and unapologetic take on the application of self-care. We hope that we succeeded in delivering this. Thank you to all the women who came and helped make the event not only a learning experience, but also a bonding one.
All the best from us at the Women's Campaign!
Sophia Moreau, Women's Officer, and Sara Hurley, Wellbeing Officer
